Excerpt:
After a second postponement, with the Communists still refusing to participate, the National Assembly finally convened on November 15, 1946, and a democratic constitution was approved and adopted on Christmas Day. But the Communists would have no part of it.
Chiang Kai-shek became completely convinced that the Communists would never negotiate a peaceful settlement but were out to win the whole domain of China by military conquest. He also believed the Communists could never represent the interests of China because their policies were created and imposed upon them by Moscow.
Time was to prove this analysis correct, but U.S. Diplomatic Strategists were the last to be convinced and then only after the Chinese mainland had been lost. Furthermore, Chiang could not convince the US Diplomatic Corps that he was justified in striking back when the Communists attacked him. When he tried to regain the territory recently seized by the Communists, it was described in Washington as “inexcusable aggression”.
Disaster Strikes Down an Old U.S. Ally
Finally, in the summer of 1946, when the Communists had repeatedly violated the truce agreement, the Nationalists decided to vigorously counterattack and penetrate deep into Manchuria. The diplomats frantically ordered Chiang to stop, but he refused to do so. He said another truce would only allow the Communists time to re-group and come back even more fiercely than before. He also said it was his intention to continue the campaign to forcibly disarm the Communists and restore them to civilian status so that China could get on with her program of constitutional government without fear of constant insurrection.
This line of reasoning did not appeal to the State Department. Three different times Chiang was ordered to issue an unconditional cease-fire. To make it stick a U.S. embargo was finally placed on all aid to Chiang. Only after United States aid abruptly halted did Chiang reluctantly agree to a cease-fire. General Marshall stated: “As Chief of Staff I armed 39 antiCommunist divisions (in China), now with a stroke of a pen I disarm them”.